Rosie Kilburn obituary

Our daughter Rosie Kilburn, who has died of cancer aged 19, lived life to the full, as a student, volunteer, chocolatier, aspiring actor, T-shirt designer, charity fundraiser, blogger, TV and radio star, and newspaper columnist.

She was born in North Yorkshire and spent parts of her childhood in Wales and Dorset, and in Gloucestershire, where she attended Newent community school. She made friends wherever she went. Rosie loved organising things, such as a Blue Peter bring-and-buy sale aged 10, and picking daffodils to sell when she was 11. These gave us an early indication of her entrepreneurial spirit.

No one was more surprised than Rosie, though, by the feisty, determined way she faced the diagnosis of a rare form of liver cancer when she was 16. Happy with the support she got, she was dismayed by how much more difficult it was to get the right support for her younger brother and sister and her friends.

So, in 2009, Rosie's sustainable fundraising business, The Knock On Effect, was born. It has raised thousands for charities which support the family and friends of people affected by cancer. To raise awareness of her first event, a scarily ambitious and hugely successful art auction, Rosie started a blog. As she found her voice, nothing became off-limits as she shared her joys, fears, symptoms and treatments with a growing international community of followers.

She appeared on the BBC Inside Out programme over three years as it followed her treatment and fundraising; was a regular contributor to BBC Radio Gloucestershire; and wrote a monthly column for the Citizen, a Gloucestershire daily newspaper. She became a poster girl for v, the national young volunteers service, when she was chosen to promote their Good for Nothing campaign, which challenged stereotypes of young people and promoted volunteering. In 2010 she was named Charity Shop Volunteer of the Year and Rotary Young Citizen of the Year.

Someone once told Rosie that cancer was the making of her. She agreed. She never did understand why thousands of people found her so inspiring. She was just being herself – open, funny, and honest – spending each day as well as she could. Hours before she died, she renewed the web domain name www.theknockoneffect.co.uk for a further two years. It was a typical Rosie message to us and the rest of Team Kilburn – face up to things and carry on doing something positive.